


Proof

by flippyspoon



Series: Modern and Interesting: Drabbles and Ficlets [13]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 12:36:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1983276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flippyspoon/pseuds/flippyspoon





	Proof

Ivy left for America with the Levinsons.  For a week after, Thomas kept an eye on Jimmy- looking for signs of heartsickness.  Even if Jimmy had not shown much sincere interest in the girl- well, Jimmy was an odd duck sometimes.  For all Thomas knew, Jimmy had fanned a passionate flame of love for Ivy.  Which…would have confounded Thomas.  He turned out to be wrong anyhow.  Though Thomas was nothing but amused when he saw Jimmy attempt to  turn on the charm with Daisy, who rolled her eyes and sniped at him to get his tray upstairs before the mutton went cold.  Jimmy attempted to charm Ivy’s replacement as well; a girl named Emma who was so quiet that everyone assumed she was mute her whole first week, until she burned her hand on a pan and yelped in pain.  Thomas had sipped tea and watched as Jimmy pestered Emma, asking if she didn’t think Mr. Carson was a bit of an overbearing lout.  Emma had only gawked at him with frightened eyes until Jimmy muttered an apology and gave up.  Thomas had heard talk of a couple of fumbled attempts to romance village girls, just as Thomas had once suggested.  Apparently those trysts had not turned out well either.

Ever since then, Jimmy had been grumpy.  He was nice enough to Thomas, but even more caustic than usual to everyone else.  He was also losing a lot of money on the ponies, by his own account.  Thomas only hoped Jimmy was too proud to ask for a loan, because Thomas was likely stupid enough to give him one.

Luckily, it did not come to that.

Unluckily, it came down to Jimmy cornering him in the yard late one evening.

“I have a favor to ask you,” Jimmy said, smoke spiraling slowly between the two of them so that Thomas couldn’t see his eyes.

_Here it comes_ , Thomas thought.  _As if he’s got anything worthwhile to spend it on._

“You aren’t in trouble, are you?” Thomas said quickly.  “With…ne’er do wells?  I could help you figure somethin’ out if…”

Jimmy only looked confused for a moment before snorting and saying, “God no. And Molesley ought to keep his mouth shut.”

“Ah. Well then?”  Thomas took a deep drag and peered down at Jimmy, pretending disinterest.

“Do you ever…?”  Jimmy sighed and leaned against the wall, his eyes on ground.  “Do you ever get a mad thought in your head?  Like somethin’ absurd you’d never do.  Somethin’ you’d normally forget about but maybe because of…because of undue… _influences_ , you keep thinkin’ of it and then suddenly you can hardly think of anything else?”

“Uh…”  Thomas exhaled and shook his head.  “Not as such.”

“Alright, look it’s ridiculous,” Jimmy said firmly.  “But…but I have a notion and I need to dispel it.  Because of course, I will.  And it’s your fault to begin with. Not that you’ve done it on purpose. I know that.  But it bein’ technically your fault, the least you could do is help me out.”

Thomas felt the slightest flash of anger that he was now being accused of something and he still did not know what, though he was already racking his brain. He was nothing but kind to Jimmy Kent- everyone knew that.

Thomas waited a few beats as Jimmy stood, shuffling his feet.  “Well?  What is it?”  Thomas finally snapped.

Jimmy cleared his throat and said, “I need you to…to…”

“Jimmy.”

“I need you…to…”

“Are you going to finish this sentence before 1930?”

“Don’t make this harder than it is!”  Jimmy said.

“What is it?”

“I need you to kiss me, alright?”

Thomas stood frozen to the spot-his cigarette turning to ash-and stared at Jimmy, who seemed suddenly taller.  Or no, it was because he was standing up very straight now, his chest puffed out, his lips pursed, as if waiting for a physical blow.

“Very amusing,” Thomas muttered.  “I’m going back inside.”  And he started to, but Jimmy grabbed his arm and yanked him back.

“I’m not foolin’!” Jimmy insisted.  “Look it…it…it’s come into my mind before.  Doubtless because I’m around you, you see?  Because of…well the way the way things were before.  And-and-and me knowin’ what you’re like, see?  That’s all.  It’s put it into me head which is ridiculous and then I try not to think about it but you’re always around and then it’s very hard not to think about it and then when I don’t I dream about it.  So what I need you to do is help me prove to my own brain that I’m not your sort and then…well then, everything’ll be fine.  See?”

A hundred questions flitted through Thomas’s mind and he managed to only say, “Ah…what exactly do you think about?”

“Things,” Jimmy said, barely audible.  “Things with…men.  But I’m not like that!”

Thomas had to cough to cover a sharp hysterical laugh bubbling up into his throat.  “Different men then?”

Jimmy paused and screwed his face, squinting up at the moon as he crossed his arms.  “No,” he mumbled.  “Only you.  Which is just precisely why it doesn’t mean a thing!  If…if I was like you I’d likely be thinkin’ about all sort of different men, right?  Like…like Rudolph Valentino!”

_He thinks about me he thinks about he thinks about me._

“So you…don’t think about Rudolph Valentino?”  Thomas said innocently.

“Well sometimes,” Jimmy admitted.  “But ah…you’re always there too.  But it’s just because of your influence!”

Thomas took a long breath and willed his cock to remain calm.  “Yes, you’ve said.  My…depraved influence.”

“Mmm,”  Jimmy bit his lip.  “Mmm, I wouldn’t call it depraved.  Just different.  But I’m not different, I’m a normal man.”  Thomas shot him a dirty look and Jimmy said, “Oh, you know what I mean!”

Thomas tried to imagine a scenario wherein a man who truly only preferred women would kiss a man to prove he didn’t like it…

It seemed unlikely.

But well…Jimmy really was an odd duck sometimes.

And Thomas wanted to be his friend.

Also, kissing him wouldn’t exactly be an arduous task.

“Fine,” Thomas said, remaining heroically composed.  “Right now?”

Jimmy stubbed out his cigarette and shrugged.  “Good a time as any.  Almost everyone’s in bed. We’re alone out here.”

Thomas nodded, as if such transactions were conducted everyday.  “Alright.  So…just the one kiss then?”

“Just one kiss,” Jimmy said firmly.  “That’ll do me.  Then I can put it out of my head.”

Thomas nodded again and took a hesitant step towards Jimmy.   “Right. Ready?”

“Whoa, wait a minute now!”  Jimmy said, his voice rising an octave.  Thomas rose an eyebrow and watched Jimmy “prepare” if one could call it that- he shook his arms out and rolled his head around.  “Right….right alright.  Do your worst.”

Thomas gave a little snort of derision but he nodded, leaned in, and kissed Jimmy briefly but solidly; a good but unremarkable peck on the lips.  He stepped back just as Jimmy started to press in.  Thomas cleared his throat and Jimmy glared at him.

“Well?” Thomas said.  “Good enough?”

“Are you joking?”  Jimmy spat.  

“Pardon?”

“What are you, my auntie?  Stuff that, my auntie kisses better than that.”  Jimmy gave him what Thomas liked to think of as a Classic Jimmy Face, his lips twisted in fury.  “How am I supposed to prove that I don’t like it if I don’t even know what it feels like?  I don’t suppose that’s how men kiss if they’re under cover of night, on the run from the law, caught up in the throes of passion-”

Thomas coughed.

“Kiss me like a man or don’t kiss me at all!”  Jimmy went on.  “Or is that all you’ve got?  Three years of pining and all you have to give me is a little- mmph!”

Thomas had kissed him again- this time shoving Jimmy against the wall behind him, and then pressing his palms to Jimmy’s cheeks as he nudged his chin down so he’d open his mouth.  Then they were kissing good and proper with tongues and teeth and hungry lips as Jimmy breathed in through his nose and pulled Thomas closer.  Thomas was just starting to lose all sense of time when he finally pulled away, his lips throbbing pleasantly.

“Good enough?”  Thomas said again, panting.

Jimmy stood frozen, mouth open, and nodded dumbly.  “Uh…uh huh.”  They stood awkwardly for a moment and Jimmy stepped forward and made a little gesture as if to grab Thomas again, but he stopped and nodded.  “Uh huh.”

Thomas nodded back.  “Well, I’m going in side.”  
“Uh huh.”

“Goodnight.”

“Hmm.”

Thomas turned and did not look back.  He managed to keep it together all the way up to his room where he collapsed on his bed and closed his eyes, his lips still tingling.  He fell asleep in his livery and his memory of kissing Jimmy Kent turned to dreams that-for the first time in his life-could not touch reality.

 

Jimmy was quiet and aloof the next day.  Thomas quelled his panic.  They had been friends this long.  Maybe Jimmy was…  Well, who knew what Jimmy was doing.  But Thomas hoped for the best.  He didn’t say a word until the next day when he went to relay a message from Carson to Jimmy, who was in the boot room shining his own shoes, a glazed expression on his face.

“The family’s taking luncheon in the uh…”  Thomas’s sentence trailed off and he frowned at Jimmy.  “Are you alright?”  He leaned against the table.

Jimmy wouldn’t look at him, but he nodded.  He’d stopped polishing his shoes.  “Hmmm.  Mmmhmm.”

“‘Cause you…don’t look alright.”

Jimmy looked up at him and his mouth went all funny as if he couldn’t decide what to do with it.   “Um…”  Then he kissed Thomas, who jerked in surprise.  Jimmy gripped Thomas’s head between his palms and held the kiss as he stood.  He broke it off suddenly.

“Um…mmm…” Jimmy ran a hand through his hair.

Thomas said, “What do-”

Jimmy kissed him again, throwing his arms around Thomas’s neck this time, and they stumbled into a shelf.  Thomas hummed in surprise, but he wrapped his arms around Jimmy’s waist and his legs turned a bit gelatinous when Jimmy’s tongue curled around his.  

Then Jimmy broke away again and stepped back, breathless and googley-eyed.

“Everything’s alright, just um…” Jimmy muttered and then wandered out into the hall.

This became a bit of a routine.

Jimmy accosted Thomas next in the servants’ all when everyone else had gone to bed.  One second Thomas was standing up, stretching, and about to go up himself, and then suddenly Jimmy was pressed up against him and there were hands clutching at his livery and soft warm lips on his own.

Then it was in the larder as Thomas was counting the stock when Jimmy appeared with no purpose at all other than to yank Thomas forward by the lapels.  Only this time his lips and tongue traveled down to Thomas’s neck and at one point Thomas felt a hand on his arse.

Another day it was in the yard behind the coal pile where Thomas was hiding to have a smoke and contemplate the strangeness of Jimmy Kent just as Jimmy arrived home from an errand to the village and Thomas was pinned against a fence and there were hands in his hair Jimmy was biting at his bottom lip and then mouthing the line of his jaw.

Each time it happened, Jimmy would then step away, as if once again shocked at his own actions and then wander off muttering to himself like an old man looking for a lost shoe.

Several similar incidents occurred and then nothing for a week.

Thomas thought it was all over.  But at least he’d gotten some spectacular kisses out of it.  And Jimmy wasn’t being too quiet either.  Now he was acting as if nothing had happened.

Then one night Jimmy came to Thomas’s room after everyone else had gone to sleep.  Thomas often had trouble falling asleep right away. He hadn’t even changed out of his livery yet.  He was smoking by the window when Jimmy came in, wearing his pajamas and stood, twisting his hands in front of him.

“I need another favor,” Jimmy said in a very low voice.

Thomas blinked at him.  The first favor had been the kiss, followed by many more but Jimmy had not asked for any of those.

“What sort of favor?”  Thomas said.

“Well, see the thing of it is,” Jimmy said, and he began to gesture with his hands as if sculpting the words.  “The thing of it is, is that I might as well be kissin’ a girl for all I know. I mean all my brain knows.  You see what I mean?  I mean I know you’re…a m-man, but my brain just feels a mouth and likely it thinks it’s a girl’s mouth so it thinks it’s bloody fantastic so um… To…to prove the thing…I mean to prove I’m not  _you know_ , I think we ought to do…somethin’…else.  Like uh…where it’s clear you’re a man.  If…if ya see.  See?”

Thomas had to bite the inside of his lip quite hard not to laugh.  But it was quite clear now that Jimmy knew exactly what he wanted, he was only trying to work up the nerve to admit it.

Thomas stubbed out his cigarette and clasped his hands in front of him.  “Alright.  What do you suggest?”

Jimmy balked.  “Well, you’re the expert, aren’t ya? What do you suggest?  I-I mean nothin’ too…involved though…”  Jimmy’s eyes lit up suddenly and he snapped his fingers.  “Oh, I know!  You ought to take off your clothes!”

“Um..”

“Just take em’ off alright? And I’ll…I’ll see what happens.  And…maybe I’ll…touch you.  A little.”

Jimmy looked absolutely serious.

Thomas coughed and said, “Well…l suppose.”

Normally he might have argued with the notion of stripping for no guaranteed reward but given those kisses…

“Just…start takin’ my clothes off?” Thomas said.

“Yeh, go ahead.”  Jimmy crossed his arms and stood there in the middle of the room.

Thomas took a few steps forward and Jimmy didn’t move, though he took a steadying breath.  Thomas stood in front of him and started unbuttoning his waistcoat.  He stripped slowly, dropping first the waistcoat and then his collar and shirt on the floor. Jimmy was chewing on his lip, his face a mask of concentration, as Thomas took off his undershirt.  When Thomas was shirtless in front of him, Jimmy cleared his throat.

Thomas said, “Shall I…keep going?”

Jimmy nodded, his eyes focused on Thomas’s chest.

Thomas off his shoes and socks and sock garters. He had taken off his belt and unbuttoned his trousers when Jimmy said, “You um…”

“Yes?” Thomas said, all innocence.”

“Nothin’, keep going.”

Thomas took off his trousers and dropped them on the floor.  “We’re into No Man’s Land, ya know.”  He frowned and said, “Actually…lately that’s an apt description…”

Jimmy didn’t laugh.  “Just do it, alright.”

Thomas took off his pants and stood naked in front of Jimmy.  He wasn’t even wearing his glove- he had taken it off earlier.  He was half-hard already.  Jimmy swallowed, his eyes flicking up and down Thomas’s body.  Thomas attempted valiantly not to be self-conscious as Jimmy merely stood there for long moments, his lips parted.

Thomas started to say, “Do you-”

He stopped speaking when Jimmy stepped forward and lay his right between Thomas’s pectorals.  He stepped closer and his left hand went to Thomas’s neck.  Thomas had to take a steadying breath himself.  They didn’t speak, not when Jimmy’s hand made a slow path down Thomas’s chest or when he stepped yet closer so that his nose was nearly touching Thomas’s chin or when he caressed Thomas’s arms and reached around to his back and kneaded the muscles there and Thomas felt it all the way down his spine.  There was just their breathing.

“Hum…um…” Jimmy wasn’t quite forming words.  His hands kept traveling; to Thomas’s hips and then his arse and then slowly he started to kneel, and as he did so his lips joined his hands in a trail down Thomas’s chest to his stomach.  Jimmy kisseed him there and Thomas had to clench his fists to stay still.

“Ah…you’re hard,” Jimmy said, his voice thick.  

Then he was kneeling on the ground and burying his face in Thomas’s abdomen and grasped at his thighs.  Jimmy made an anguished sound and then his hand was on Thomas’s cock.  Thomas lurched forward slightly and let himself feel Jimmy’s hair between his fingers and he moaned involuntarily as Jimmy stroked him, slow and uncertain.

“Hmm nuh…I…like this…”  Jimmy murmured.

Jimmy was kissing the inside of Thomas’s thighs.  Thomas said, “Hmmm have you uh…p-proved anything?”

“Ha…only that I want you so badly, I think I might die from it.”

Thomas fell to his knees, which hurt on the hard floor and kissed Jimmy, pushing him back so he lay on top of him.  Jimmy wrapped his legs and arms around Thomas- only Jimmy’s thin pajamas between them as their erections rubbed together.  They kissed madly and writhed together.  Jimmy broke the kiss then and they stared at each other as they moved and Jimmy broke into a wide grin interrupted by a gasp.  But then he laughed.

“Ah…what?” Thomas said brokenly.

Thomas felt consumed by pleasure and then by love when Jimmy shook his head and said, “You proved me wrong, you always do.”


End file.
